The research behind the Worldview Test
The Worldview Test is grounded in seven years of academic research by Annick de Witt (and colleagues), conducted at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Delft University of Technology. It is the first comprehensive instrument of its kind — designed to measure people’s overarching frameworks of meaning across diverse life domains, from science to spirituality, from nature to society.
While countless instruments in the social sciences measure specific aspects of how people see the world — values, attitudes, beliefs — a tool that captures the bigger picture has long been missing. The Worldview Test fills that gap by connecting views on very different topics — science, nature, God, the universe, death, the good life, suffering, society — to approach people’s generalized and overarching ways of making sense of the world.
What makes it different
Most social science instruments measure one slice of how people see the world — their political values, their personality traits, their attitudes toward a specific issue. The Worldview Test is different in three ways:
- It’s comprehensive. It asks about the big questions that worldviews give answers to: What is the nature of reality? How do we know what’s true? What makes a good life? What is our relationship to nature? How do we envision an ideal society? By spanning these domains, it captures the overarching story rather than isolated beliefs.
- It’s theoretically grounded. Rather than inventing new categories, the four worldviews in the test build on extensive existing scholarship in sociology, philosophy, and developmental psychology. These are worldviews that have been recognized and described by thinkers across disciplines for decades.
- It’s empirically validated. The worldviews aren’t just theoretical ideas — they were found in the data with statistical reliability, and they predict real-world attitudes and behaviors in fairly consistent ways.
How the test is being used and applied
Since its development, the Worldview Test has been taken by nearly 100,000 people from over 200 countries, generating an ever-growing global database on worldviews. It is used for education, organizational change, personal interest, and general worldview-awareness building. It is also being used in research, with scholars from diverse disciplines applying the framework and instrument in fields including:
- Psychology, health care, and mental health
- Education and transformative learning
- Management and organizational change
- Sustainability and environmental policy
- Public perception of biotechnology, and forest-based bio-economy
- Innovation and business
- Law
- And much more
The test contributes to a growing body of evidence that worldviews are a critical — yet largely unaddressed — factor in understanding public debates, designing effective policy, and fostering the cultural change our time demands.
How the test was developed
The development of the Worldview Test creatively combined two approaches to studying worldviews that had previously remained separate.
On the one hand, philosophers and historians have explored worldviews in analytical and speculative fashion, distilling the deep assumptions underlying our collective thinking. They traced the historical-developmental trajectory of cultural epochs in the West, distinguishing between different broad ways of seeing the world.
On the other hand, social scientists took a more empirical, quantitative approach — developing surveys to question different populations about their beliefs and values, and using statistics to reveal overarching patterns.
The Worldview Test bridges these two traditions. It is grounded in a rich qualitative understanding of four major worldviews — traditional, modern, postmodern, and integrative — as described in philosophical, sociological, and psychological literature. At the same time, it translates these into short, accessible statements that can be tested empirically, allowing us to investigate these worldviews in large populations and establish overarching patterns.
What the research found
The study underlying the Worldview Test, conducted with representative samples in the Netherlands and the USA (n = 527 and n = 556), found the four hypothesized worldviews in the data with a reasonable degree of reliability. It also revealed consistent relationships between these worldviews and a range of opinions, political priorities, and behaviors.
For example, in both countries postmoderns and integratives displayed significantly more concern about climate change as well as more sustainable behaviors, compared with moderns and traditionals. These findings underscore that worldviews are not just abstract philosophical constructs — they tangibly shape how people engage with the pressing issues of our time. The results are reported in a peer-reviewed article published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Policy.
The doctoral dissertation
The Worldview Test emerged from Annick de Witt’s doctoral research at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, which more broadly explored the cultural and psychological dimensions of our global environmental challenges. The dissertation spans philosophy, psychology, sociology, and policy, developing both a theoretical framework (the Integrative Worldview Framework) and the empirical instrument that became the Worldview Test. You can access the full dissertation here.
Limitations and future directions
As with any instrument, there are limitations. Language brings complications, as the same term can have varying meanings in different cultural contexts. The test was initially developed and validated in Western contexts, and while evidence suggests these worldviews are recognizable beyond the West, culturally sensitive adaptations remain an important area for future work. We therefore aspire to refine and improve the Worldview Test, including through developing more worldview-statements, culturally sensitive language-testing, and translations for non-Western contexts.
Key publications
- De Witt, A. (2024). Designing transformative interventions for a world in crisis: How the ‘Worldview Journey’ invites for personal, cultural, and systems transformation. Sustainability Science. Read →
- De Witt, A., De Boer, J., Hedlund, N., & Osseweijer, P. (2016). A new tool to map the major worldviews in the Netherlands and USA, and explore how they relate to climate change. Environmental Science & Policy, 63, 101-112. Read →
- Hedlund-de Witt, A. (2013). Worldviews and the Transformation to Sustainable Societies. PhD dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Read →
For a full list of publications, see Annick de Witt’s ORCID profile.